One of the more interesting of late was this blog by Dr Lindsey Macmillan that deftly debunks the myth of intergenerational welfare dependence i.e., families where several generations of people have never worked and rely on benefits rather than wages; indeed, choose such a ‘lifestyle’ as the poverty porn and government narrative posits.

Macmillan’s PhD thesis focused on the empirical evidence that exists (or not) on the scale of the issue of intergenerational worklessness and concluded that it is massively over-emphasised. Her main findings are:

there is only a tiny fraction of multi-generational households (MGHs) in which both generations have never worked (15,000, or 0.3% of MGHs)

of which around a third are households where the younger generation has only left full-time education within the last 12 months (thus perhaps only a temporary state of multi-generational worklessness)

though sons of workless fathers will be more likely to experience more time out of work than their peers with an employed father, in areas of low unemployment the labour market experiences of sons of workless fathers and sons of employed fathers will be broadly similar;

but the experiences in high unemployment areas will vastly differ between sons of workless and employed fathers, with the son of the former spending up to 30% more of his time workless than his friend with an employed dad

Macmillan contends that a family’s experience of work and local labour market conditions are more a factor than any family pathology. Notably that such families will experience a large degree of churn in and out of the labour market over the working lives of both generations. Both generations are therefore more at risk of simultaneous worklessness but by external factors.

A fascinating conclusion, related to the third bullet point above, is the apparent role of informal networks on job-seeking. Though, Macmillan concedes, data is limited on networks in the UK, there is evidence from elsewhere about the value of informal connections. Because as the cost of looking for a job increases with unemployment – due to there being fewer jobs available; a fact that is overlooked, or (deliberately obfuscated?) by the get-on-yer-bike-and-look-for-work lobby – any ‘short cut’ that puts you within reach of a job is a massive boost. An employed friend, or even an unemployed friend of an employed dad, might be potentially useful to you in your job-seeking efforts. Simply,

“For sons with workless fathers, the combination of high unemployment rates and weaker informal connections could be driving the higher rates of labour market churn.”

This should be thought-provoking for those of us working in areas with fragile labour markets, particularly those post-industrial communities whose labour once upon a time ago would easily be mopped up by nearby large steelworks, pits or docks. Not only in terms of how interventions such as, but not exclusively, Communities First (CF) might nurture the informal connections that appear so beneficial to job-seekers in areas of unemployment, but how it should challenge some preconceptions that I have heard expressed over the years by some in CF.

It might be half-expected from the likes of Ian Duncan-Smith for whom, infamously, unemployment in Merthyr Tydfil could easily be tackled by individuals merely catching the train to Cardiff where work would appear, to him at least, be plentiful (though this conveniently overlooks the economic activity rates in the west, east and south of the city). Indeed, in her blog Macmillan links to several policy statements emanating from Duncan-Smith’s portfolio.

It might be somewhat more surprising to hear it from workers in the CF programme. Presumably a programme whose workforce prides itself in knowing its communities and getting to know the needs of individuals its supports will be cognisant of an individual’s circumstances. Perhaps not as much as it requires, though, for unless the households that comprise the 0.3% of MGHs (see bullet one) concentrate in Wales, and specifically in CF areas, there should be not as much experience of (supposed) entrenched worklessness being present in CF as I have heard some express. This is borne out by the majority of households in Wales where no-one has worked for over 6 months (and therefore eligible for support by the Lift/Esgynprogramme) actually being single person households and therefore not MGHs

Perhaps it’s more a question of perception or language? Perhaps we should not take people at face value if they say their parents have never worked, thus erroneously confirming our bias? Certainly Macmillan’s findings would suggest that one’s parents might have never sustained long, even medium, term employment or forged a career in a particular field or sector. But “never worked”? Though there will be some these must be minute based on the overall data that Macmillan has researched and, therefore MGHs must be the exception rather than the rule in CF communities.

It’s been strange couple for weeks for those of us working on the Communities First (CF) programme.

The Welsh Government’s Programme for Government (PfG) failed to mention CF at all. The First Minister was repeatedly pressed by Radio Wales on the programme’s future but refused to yield any clue as to what happens at the end of this financial year. The Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children also failed to suggest CF has a future when setting out his portfolio’s priorities to the Assembly’s Equality, Local Government & Communities Committee.

The cherry on top was Wales Online’s decision to dredge up the 2009 Plas Madoc scandal as part of its reporting of the PfG. Never one to offer balanced reporting of CF it typically failed to report that auditors found precious little of concern in governance inquiries in the scandal’s aftermath.

The Bevan Foundation’s commentary is at least a measured comment at a time when there is a a worrying information ‘vacuum’ about the future of CF. Communities First, which is in its fourteenth year, deserves better.

True, few programmes have received the cross-party consensus and longevity of funding that it has. There have been bumps along the way and the programme was fundamentally misunderstood for many years in its infancy. But we must remember that it has operated in the most disadvantaged communities in Wales.

These are communities that find themselves routinely at the wrong end of tables for chronic health, mortality, employment, educational attainment and numerous other indicators. Given Wales itself tends to fare badly when compared with other home nations and English regions on such proxies for disadvantage, it serves as a sober reminder that these are communities whose disadvantage is so entrenched as to make them among the most deprived in the whole of the UK, and probably further afield.

The Bevan Foundation is right to draw attention to how CF “simply could not swim against the tide of major economic and social forces” such as welfare reform and austerity policies; and who yet knows how CF areas will cope post-Brexit?

However, the truth is that Welsh Government itself has relatively few levers to mitigate the impact of welfare reform and austerity. Stringent cuts to the public sector are not confined to England, and where the Welsh Government does have some devolved scope to mitigate impact, such as discretionary housing payments, these will be increasingly under budgetary pressure in coming years.

CF may be largely impotent against such forces, but we should not devalue or overlook the merit in knowing what the impact of such forces is on communities, neighbourhoods and households. Immersed in communities in the way that CF is means it has ‘intelligence’ in abundance. Better sharing of this intelligence is required however. Since 2009 I have been involved in supporting, training and advising the Communities First workforce. The Communities First Support Service talks increasingly these days of supporting the workforce’s learning. Having such a dispersed programme and workforce across Wales means that it seldom acts with a unified voice on issues. Numerous CF staff will be acutely aware of the complexities caused by, for instance, Universal Credit and housing on the lives of people in or on the cusp of poverty. They will work closely with individuals whose efforts to return to the labour market are undermined by fragile mental health or abusive domestic environments. Or they will see at first-hand how aspects of ethnicity, gender or faith can aggravate poverty. But they rarely share the learning that has happened to inform this understanding.

How these, and a myriad of other factors, combine to affect the lives of disadvantaged individuals is witnessed by Communities First staff, who are potentially as expert as anyone on poverty in Wales. The challenge for WCVA and Welsh Government is to better connect the workforce and so that it can inform policy and practice, both of Communities First and other agencies.

But what underpins this relationship with individuals and communities is trust and the Bevan Foundation is absolutely right to note that it is unlikely that:

“large-scale, government schemes that offer similar services [to Communities First] will have the reach or trust of people in deprived areas”.

But this trust has built-up in Communities First areas over the last decade and more and must not be allowed to dissipate wholesale when the future of the programme is resolved, as it all too often does towards the end of funding rounds as uncertainty creeps into the programme and staff churn happens.

The Communities First workforce is not just a group of workers on a government programme. It is a workforce that is informed about, trusted by and immersed in communities; whose training has been invested in over many years and whose skills have been nurtured; which is underpinned by community development principles; and which, along with Communities First’s cluster configuration, serves to provide an operational and practical apparatus for the connection of other more focused programmes such as Lift or Communities for Work. Moreover, CF provides for an ethical basis for these programmes. The more agencies such as Job Centre Plus move to an outreach approach, the more it needs a programme like CF to mediate its traditional delivery. In this ‘work’ blog about men’s engagement in the Upper Rhymney Valley the Cluster Manager, Sean, talks about how he invites JCP staff to drop by activities with local men in order to be more ‘humanized’. Part and parcel of being disadvantaged is feeling stigmatised and condescended by the very services charged to ‘help’.

Policies that encourage communities to greater ownership of assets, local plans and co-production of services are all well and good but inherent in this is a requirement to re-fashion power relations between stakeholders. Power is seldom given away. So community development as a practice is committed to fairer distributions of local power and a workforce that is trusted to work in the interests of communities will be required to help facilitate and broker new settlements. Former Sustainable Futures Commissioner for Wales, Peter Davies, recently addressed the One Voice Wales conference for Town and Community Councillors. He said:

“We need less of the top down national programmes parachuting into local communities on short term contracts and more support for community led projects that can meet local needs for the long term”

People living in poverty will continue to be vulnerable to pernicious economic and social forces but they are often not having their local needs met either. There should be scope in programmes such as Communities First – or whatever it evolves into or is succeeded by – to help support the third sector and community interests to develop strategies to increase community resilience and not just to work with individuals to improve theirs, as important as this is to them.

It should also be remembered that ‘community-led’ will itself be a contested concept. Local authorities may have a particular interpretation of community-led that differs from independent local trusts or associations. Town and Community Councils may have another. In his address, Davies is right, by quoting Conservative Assembly Member Angela Burns, to draw attention to so-called representative community organisations that actually serve to represent only narrow (self-)interests.

In this respect, governance arrangements must be robust and fit-for-purpose but also allow for the inclusion of new and traditionally under-represented interests.Support for people to enhance their understanding and broaden their skills will be required to ensure that there is plurality in decision-making and that succession planning can provide for continuity. Funders need to be flexible in how they shape and prescribe their funding programmes. At the heart of CF or – gulp, a post-CF programme – must be a commitment to asset based development that recognises that all communities have strengths and assets and should not be defined by their problems or issues.

Among its suggestions for a post-CF approach to tackling poverty, the Bevan Foundation is right to assert that there should be a strong anti-poverty theme in all Welsh Government strategies. Moreover there should be a strong anti-poverty theme to all government – local and central – strategies in Wales and those of government sponsored bodies. If the time has come to end CF, as the Bevan Foundation suggests because it doesn’t address the underlying causes of poverty, there is a danger in pitching programmes and interventions against each other. Peter Davies says the time has come for fewer top down national programmes and I wouldn’t disagree. But there’s an argument that says until the Welsh Assembly has adequate control over (and appetite to use…?) the tax and welfare levers that can mount a robust challenge to poverty at a national scale, then local responses to the impact of poverty will still be required, albeit perhaps fashioned in a different configuration to that which is presently the case. Besides, we certainly need more bottom-up approaches, but if they come at the expense of top-down governmental commitment and vision then change may prove to be only piecemeal and patchwork across Wales. If the powers that be decide that the majority of projects that CF delivers are of, at best, only modest impact, so be it. There is potential to tackle poverty in reconfigured forms of food and energy production, new approaches to caring for our elderly and vulnerable members of society, and in mobilising alternative currencies. If other things work better than CF then I would be among the first to herald them. However, these can be piloted and mobilised locally but aggregating and scaling-up the benefits is not inevitable. It also requires a lot of learning – that L word again – to take place to understand why they are (or might be) successful.The Bevan Foundation suggests transferring the most successful Communities First activities to community ownership; paramount in this is also identifying and sharing why they are successful.

And this is key: ‘might be successful’. It takes bold political vision to try and persist with different approaches and that can be found at a local level but on its own can be a lone voice. It takes bold visions at all levels, including the neighbourhood, and for those visions to mesh and connect to achieve lasting change.

Until we better understand poverty – which in the Welsh context the Bevan Foundation does commendable work to do – our policies, strategies and interventions will continue to make only modest in-roads.

We finalised the research brief and in so doing I gained a much clearer understanding of playwork (as distinct from play). But more than that it prompted me to consider community development in a different light.

In the research brief Mike referred to community development in a way that caught my eye. Here is a precis of the interview with Mike in which he expands on this idea.

The full interview is available in this podcast:

Russell: What do people need to know about you Mike?

Mike: I have three main roles in relation to children’s play and playwork. One I’m a dad, so working in some support, or not, of children’s play on a daily basis. But then I run an organisation called Ludicology with Ben Tawil. And Ludicology means a study of playfulness, so that’s what that organisation is really about and we provide advice, research and training around children’s play and that’s really about supporting anybody that’s working with or on behalf of children to better understand children’s playfulness and therefore how we work with them. But I’m also the Play Sufficiency Lead for Wrexham Council. So I manage Wrexham Council’s Play Development Team, I support and manage a lot of playwork provision and I’ve only ever been a playworker. I’ve managed to make a career out of being a playworker and there’s not a lot of people who can say that because there’s not many playworkers. So playwork is a real passion of mine. I think the playwork profession has a lot of value that isn’t widely recognised.

Russell: What’s brought us to this situation of sitting around the table now, was that with my work hat on in the Communities First programme in Wales and you with your Wrexham Council hat on, we’re working on a piece of work around trying to better capture, better articulate some of the social benefits of playwork. I’m not going to talk about that now. But as part of the brief there was a sentence that made me stop in my tracks as I was reading, and that was that:

“Playwork might best be understood as play centred community development”

Mike: It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while and I think for a lot of people who are in the UK who have been in playwork for a long time, this is really the way, within playwork, a lot of those people would have thought about it. But I suppose to make sense of it we should start talking about what playwork is about and in terms of what playworkers do, they are first and foremost concerned with supporting children’s right to play. So the outcome of playwork ideally is more playing. A playworker is concerned with the child agenda of playing which is pretty unique really. If you look at most adults who work with children they usually, and this isn’t to diminish their roles at all, come with some form of adult desired outcome. They are working with children towards some future developmental outcome. And playwork isn’t. Playwork is concerned about whether children are able to play as an everyday part of their lives.

“And so primarily, in simple terms, playwork is primarily about enabling and supporting children’s play.”

But then when you think about how do you go about supporting children’s play and think about the realities of children’s play, most people through their own childhoods or through having children, would recognise that children play in all kinds of places. Children don’t just play in these designated times and spaces where playworkers might be: adventure playgrounds or play schemes. Those places are great for playing, but they’re not all of children’s play lives by any means. And actually if we wanted to really support children’s play it would be about making sure that children could easily find time and space for playing wherever they find themselves. In those communities where children rate a very high satisfaction with playing, you find examples of them playing all over the place and that leads you to think it’s more about developing the conditionsfor playing rather than only about that specific provision. How do we cultivate more favourable conditions so that children can find time and space for playing? And that’s where I think we start to look at this community development role because playworkers, when they’re at their best, are looking at how do you cultivate a culture of playing throughout a whole community.

Certainly some of the best playwork that I’ve seen and I’m really proud to say that I’ve seen it in Wrexham, is those places where playworkers are right in amongst their communities. They might have a designated place, a junk playground which offers certain things, but they’re also right in the middle of their communities, they’re involved in community celebrations, they’re playing hide and seek on estates, they’re cleaning up patches of grass, creating that kind of sense that children’s play is welcome in this community.

“I think in that way, playworkers are doing community development work; they’re trying to develop communities that are supportive of play.”

Russell: You describe it like that and, well, why had that not really occurred to me previously? And I think it’s because maybe it’s that interpretation or conception of play as a certain thing that happens; and defining it in a certain way. It looks like maybe play schemes or council playgrounds and parks, and I think I feel almost a tinge of guilt that I’d overly simplified it. When we first started working together, I picked up quite early on from you – what’s the polite way of saying this? – that you were quite determined to make the distinction between playwork, play and playing. I didn’t want to say the word obsessive! But playwork is a particular thing that is distinct from other things. And that was something I found myself having to coach myself not to annoy you with.

The principles behind doing this podcast is that you see reference to community development quite a lot and you go, well it’s immersed in the community, it’s well intended, it might one day become community development, but it’s not at the moment. And I sense a sort of parallel between how you are describing playwork.

Mike: I’m now very wary of maybe me using community development in the wrong way! But children are driven to relentlessly try and find opportunities for playing. And what we’ve seen over recent decades, I think, is adults almost trying to take ownership of the word play. There always has to be a why children play. So children play because it’s about learning; or children play because it improves physical activity. That’s not why children play. Children play because they are driven to do it and they’re motivated because of the pleasure they gain from doing it. It is that simple. We don’t really treat children often as people. But playworkers do and we say those kinds of people are very playful, that’s what they do and therefore we should support that because they have a right as a person to do that stuff in their communities. And so for playwork, play is about stuff that kids do for whatever reason they do it. But in saying that, we recognise that all kinds of benefits are coming from them doing it. The irony is that when adults try and take ownership of that play and try and make it purposeful to get to the developmental outcome they desire, we see adults getting involved and making play less playful.

Russell: It’s quite powerful I suppose to say children do it for its sheer, intrinsic value and the pleasure they drive from it.

Mike: That’s what the Welsh Government says.

“The definition in the Play Policy says that it’s freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated. It’s more or less child led. It’s highly variable, it contains all of these kinds of elements of uncertainty and it is done for its own sake.”

And when adults try and support it for some other external goal it isn’t really playing, and children know it. And where they get enough playing they have a better attachment to the places because they can recognise people and instiutions who are supportive of play, and they can recognise communities that are supportive of play. It’s about recognising that children aren’t quite as simple as you might think.

Russell: So playworkers get that

Mike: Hopefully

Russell: And when I say playworkers, in the same way that there’s a particular definition in your mind and the sector’s mind of what is and what isn’t playwork, does that follow the same for what is and isn’t a playworker? The reason I ask that is because in the community development sector there has been for the last few years this drive to professionalise it, and I always use that term advisedly because there is a certain pejorative connotation that that throws up. But to develop, articulate and form that consensus around values and principles and to develop occupational standards. So a community development worker is somebody that does these things, informed by these values and abides by these principles. Is there the same parallel with people who are playworkers?

Mike: Yes, I think so and I think the really important point is like you say there, that I think there has been a danger in the past that it’s seen that playworkers are the ones that work with play, therefore other people don’t. And that’s certainly not the case. And in terms of the things we do with Ludicology and in Wrexham, we’re saying that anybody who works with and on behalf of children and their families would be best placed to do so where they have a good understanding of children’s play and how to work with it. Many of the problems we come across is where we work against children’s innate playfulness. So everybody would be better off understanding children’s play. But I do think playwork has a distinct role in terms of being focused on play as the outcome, not coming at it from other adult prescribed outcomes, and being primarily concerned with cultivating these more favourable conditions and relating to children by supporting their play.

I think there is real value in that profession being appropriately recognised and that’s what playwork has been trying to do. Playwork came out of the junk playgrounds, the concept of which was brought to the UK from Denmark. But it was through that emergence of playwork over probably 60 years that we then worked towards what we call the Playwork Principles which is a kind of ethical framework that guides playwork practice. Only eight principles. But that stuff was only introduced around 2000 onwards. But those values and ideas had been developing for 40 years before that and I think within playwork there is certainly a shared appreciation of what playwork is. I don’t think that playwork’s always been very good at articulating what it is and that’s maybe why it’s not as well-known as it should be.

Russell: People tend to have conversations with each other, within that very, sort of, closed shop. Community development is the same. Communities First as a programme is the same. We talk to each other about things, we learn from each other, we don’t necessarily tell other people or stakeholders and certainly not those people who don’t get it or don’t want it, for whatever reason. I can certainly see a parallel there.

MIke: Yes and I think part of it comes down to going back to play as an outcome. It’s all about how we construct childhood and play in the UK and the fact that play isn’t really currently seen as a legitimate outcome in its own right. Play is not as important as learning or sport or these other things in our society we value more than playing; although the irony is that for children playing is probably the most important one. But if play was really valued, and people really understood what happens when you work in support of play, then I think that position might change.

Russell: So is part of the role of playworker about persuading others – funders, the powers that be, political leaders, community leaders – of its intrinsic value, that it as an outcome is enough in itself? And something else you wrote in that initial brief was about the extent to which playworkers support the development of positive attitudes towards children and that corrected me where you think, ‘Ok, they’re just supervising kids playing’.

Mike: Yes. Advocacy is one of the Playwork Principles and I think it’s advocacy at many levels. As a playworker I hardly do any work with kids now. I still count myself as a playworker but I spend most of my time advocating to strategic decision makers, funders, elected members and parents and other professionals. But we’ve got playworkers out today and they’ll be advocating maybe in a very subtle way to parents and people wandering past. So I think there’s all kinds of little bits of advocacy but really maybe ‘conversations’ is a better word. I think there’s all kinds of conversations to be had about children and their position within communities. And that stuff has to happen on a day by day basis. Also sometimes I think it is taking a stand and I’ve seen playworkers do that, who won’t allow children’s rights to be railroaded. I think there’s a real justice issue around children in communities, particularly around spatial justice and this idea that it’s very easy to overlook children’s rights because they have less power.

“And so often adult decisions and preferences get prioritised, sometimes at the expense of children. And it’s not about saying we should prioritise children’s rights over adults’; it’s about a more equal distribution. So I think often playworkers are mediating between child and adult agendas and giving children more of a voice.”

Russell: In the first place, identifying and drawing attention to those power imbalances or inequalities, doing something to address, maybe even them out a little bit more is I suppose bread and butter to somebody calling themselves a community development worker. The community with whom you are doing that, whether it’s children and young people; whether it’s with communities of interest, based around ethnicity or other characteristics; whether it’s to do with what’s been primarily my background, areas of deprivation and disadvantage, you’re having to redress those power imbalances. And sometimes some of the most deeply rooted ones are not between the haves and the have nots, so to speak, but within the have nots where you’ve got people or some sort of very prominent community role “representing”, in inverted commas, the community. And although that’s important – a traditional representative form of democracy is a staple of our society – you can do it in a participative way and the power imbalances or power struggles that have come about where your traditional councillor has found his or her role a little bit undermined, have been absolutely fascinating to see up close.

Mike: Yes and I think playwork is political and it has certainly been at the centre of many political issues within communities. There was a community recently and they were doing a consultation around the redevelopment of some of the housing; maybe adult priorities are given greater emphasis. But then the playworkers take the children into the consultation and it’s not always an easy situation for adults to be in, but it does start to change those processes and maybe it does enable something that is a little bit more democratic or at least something that’s a bit more just. But as a consequence playwork is always going to be tied to political issues.

Russell:Absolutely. You sometimes hear this within Communities First: “We’ve got to be apolitical, non-political”. The reality is what we’re talking about is the distribution of wealth and resources and power. If that’s not politics then I don’t know what is. That’s been the case for thousands of years.

Mike: Yes and maybe it’s politics at a local level, with a small p.

Russell: But I think it should be embraced and if we’re talking about trying to create more rounded, more fully engaged citizens, we know there’s a big democratic deficit in a lot of disadvantaged communities. Then surely showing young people or people at whatever formative age that there’s merit in getting involved, in putting their view forward. That can only be a good thing. It comes back to this thing about well why do we have to justify this? There’s clearly an intrinsic value in it; they’re the community leaders of tomorrow, they’re the informed parents of tomorrow.

Mike: And they’re the children of today. That’s a big part of it for me, is about how often do children meet an adult who is pretty much on equal terms with them? I think that playwork spaces are pretty democratic spaces. They should be places where if children go, “Actually we want to pull that down now”, they can pull it down. It’s pretty empowering for kids really. More so now than ever, I think children spend time in environments that are supervised and run by adults and those adults can, I think, overextend their authority.

We were looking at different levels of satisfaction with opportunities for play in communities and a couple of the places where children didn’t just say it was good but the majority of kids in that community said it was great, were the places where they had sustained playwork. I was talking to the kids, and these were in some of what would be seen as more economically deprived areas, and we asked this group of kids, what’s the thing that helps the most? And they were saying, without a doubt the adventure playground. Which perhaps was no surprise but what was really interesting was they then went on to talk more about what the adventure playground did for them when they weren’t at the adventure playground than what happens inside the adventure playground. And they were telling real stories of things that had happened to them. They got chased by a dog, they could go and find the playworker. They forgot their coat and they were cold, they went and found a playworker. There was some scary bloke chasing them, the playworker walked them home and when it got dark they rang mum to say, kid’s on the way. These might seem like really little things but to kids they’re really big things and they build up.

What you get from that is a really trusting relationship, that there are these adults out there who are keeping an eye, who are making the community feel a bit safer, helping them get along with stuff, and as a consequence what you see where you have sustained playwork is this culture of playing.

Russell: Which is why I’m interested in this, it’s about how that can help make, in that instance, slightly more cohesive communities, which might sound big and grand, because it might be what you’re talking about is a little cul de sac of 20 houses, but then a lot of people talk about how they don’t know their neighbours anymore. So we can overlook the significance of that at our peril.

Mike: I think play is just a really important part of the human condition. And when we talk about community development, like you were saying, redistributing power and stuff like that, often the ways in which we do that are through a form of playing or another, whether it’s bringing people together to have a bit of a picnic or a water fight. It isn’t done for some external reward, it’s just something everyone can do. And I think there is something very powerful about adults being around children playing. I think that’s some kind of evolutionary thing where we benefit from seeing kids having a good time.

Russell: I think that’s absolutely right. That’s fascinating. I could probably talk for another couple of hours. Do you want to give another little plug for yourself and Ludicology?

Mike: Yes, so people can visit the website www.ludicology.com where we also do a podcast, so there’s more on there really about playwork and the concept of play sufficiency as an organising principle for communities. If people are interested in this stuff they can find out more there. And in terms of the work in Wrexham they can visit www.wrexham.gov.uk/play and find out more about what we’re doing in and around Wrexham.

And if anybody ever wants to come and visit stuff we’re always open. We have visitors from all over the world coming to Wrexham. It would be nice if we made more of it in Wales and particularly in Wrexham ourselves. But there are still many other places where good playwork happens in the UK. Unfortunately in Wales we have seen a significant reduction in it as a consequence of reductions in public funding.

Russell: Which is an ongoing challenge for a lot of us in this sort of work. Mike, diolch yn fawr, and it would be nice to do this again some time.

I love discovering a new online app or platform. I can barely recall what life was like before I discovered Twitter (actually I can. I shared opinions, observations, ideas and interesting links with friends via texts and emails; but I didn’t make as many friends that way, as I have through Twitter). I discover more new music via YouTube than via any other means. I have finally discovered a relevance for Google+. I now run four WordPress blogs across my work-life continuum. Of course they don’t all push my buttons (I’ve been free of Facebook for over six happy years).

So when the course introduced Edmodo and Padlet there was the usual frisson of curiosity. I haven’t got round to exploring Edmodo yet but I have made my inaugural posting on Padlet.

My first thought was that Padlet resembled Pinterest. My second thought was how daunting it is to navigate. This is a only a small proportion of the number of posts on it.

How will I navigate all of them or discern which are relevant to my learning?

Reassuringly, the end of week summary poses a similar question:

How to keep up with everything being contributed?

We can’t, of course, and should not try to – join the conversation as you can, as you would join your colleagues over lunch.

And this makes perfect sense of course. Just because a library has thousands of books doesn’t mean you are expected or need to read them all. But libraries help you navigate their collections and I’m not sure Padlet conveniently does that.

I can see how it might complement our podcasts on community involvement with listeners able to post different links, resources and comments inspired by the podcast discussion they are listening/have listened to.

It’s still early days though. As a visual learner and ‘scanner’ of websites, rather than someone who reads in detail, Padlet is certainly a better stimulus for me. I don’t suppose, either, that applying Padlet to a Communities First context the wall would grow anywhere near as large as the BLE course one.

Well, actually less reflections, and more confirmation of some pre-held assumptions.

The video that accompanies unit 1.6 (Digital technology and learners) stresses how technology enhances the flexibility of learning for a learner and cites a learner’s ability to skype his tutor and engage with him via Google Hangouts. He also cites being able to submit assignments via Turnitin, and merely ‘chatting’ with his tutor via Facebook, Edmodo (which I’d not heard of before) or Hangouts.

Professor Laurillard acknowledges the ability of the learner to manage his time with such technologies. But she skirts this in favour of drawing attention to what she calls the “crucial value of the technology” which is that they give him “flexible access for social learning” (emphasis added). Enhancing the sociability of learning is an important – “crucial” even – aspect of blended learning. In the cited instance Prof. Laurillard concludes that the learner “isn’t isolated”.

I touched on this in my first Personal reflections blog and how the Blended Learning Essentials course appeared to place an emphasis on sociability and learner interaction. Clearly, this is designed in, not because it is a nice, fluffy thing to do; rather it is a pedagogic necessity that enhances learners’ achievement.

Considering the Communities First workforce as potential users of our Learning Zone moodle many of our potential learners are remote-working, peripatetic and working directly with clients, many of whom have multiple needs and/or difficult personal circumstances. I had already recognised their need to have flexibility in determining when/where it suits them to learn. But I had previously considered the sociability aspect to their online and blended learning on the Learning Zone has an optional extra.

This particular unit on the course suggests it is more a necessity.

Another interesting element in considering what technologies offer in terms of flexibility is the permission to use particular platforms/websites.

The Communities First workforce is primarily employed by Welsh local authorities whose restrictions are frankly Draconian when it comes to allowing which sites their staff can access outside lunch breaks, if at all. The video cites Google Hangouts, Edmodo and Facebook as examples of platforms which enhance the sociability of learning but I would hazard a guess that none are available to the majority of CF workers at, say, 10.30am on a weekday morning.

To illustrate this point, I have had first-hand experience of this with respect to a pilot podcast that I recorded with members of the CF workforce in May.

I had identified several people with whom to evaluate the recording for content, audio quality, length and ease of listening. The mp3 was too large to email and so I placed it in a Dropbox folder and on Soundcloud for people to access to either listen in situ or download to a device of their own choice. Variously, people could not access one or other site via their work PC; had to do so from their own home PCs, requiring them to share with me their personal emails; or could access the sites but had no media player through which to listen to the mp3.

Flexibility isn’t something that is brought about by the the availability of technologies alone. There are external factors that can greatly, even completely, constrain a learner and educator’s efforts to make learning flexible.

WCVA‘s Learning Zone will be hosting these resources and courses. In readiness for the launch of it and the ongoing development of learning materials I have been undertaking the University of Leeds’ Blended Learning Essentials: Getting Started course on The Open University’s Future Learn online platform.

It requires around four hours of learning a week for four weeks and I can complete it at my own pace and in my own time. It’s flexible as well; so if I do only two hours one week I can make it up the following week.

The course encourages you to reflect on the learning and as someone schooled in community development practice this has come naturally to me as I have started the course; the encouragement is always helpful though!

One thing that struck me immediately was the informality and friendliness of the experience. It was very welcoming with a simple film introducing the institution, the platform, the educators and examples of the forthcoming learning content. I was encouraged to introduce myself via a learners’ forum and, without realising the function existed, attracted a follower within minutes. It has a look, feel and lexicon similar to those of social media platforms. On reflection I suppose this allows for a more sociable aspect to the learning. There’s no common room, refectory or (*hiccup*) student bar to where one can share learning experiences, collaborate or socialise with other learners/students; so the forums allow for more peer-interaction and doesn’t make the blended learning experience as lonely as one might fear it will be.

This is interesting from the point of view of the CF workforce. I am of the opinion that there is insufficient interaction between the CF workforce, certainly beyond county and cluster boundaries; and therefore we don’t learn from each other as much as we might. Our Learning Zone will have a forum capacity and perhaps this is something that could be made more prominent. Again, much like social media platforms with a personal avatar and opportunity to describe oneself, the profile function aids this.

The Blended Learning Essentials introduction was not only welcoming but practically helpful as well. This has also highlighted the importance of practical ‘how to’ guides for people; with our Learning Zone, it is not enough for us to expect to ‘build it and they will come’.

For learners unfamiliar with online learning it is not only the course that needs introducing but the platform itself and environmental considerations. With this in mind the Blended Learning Essentials course features a short video (there are lots of visual resources, which as a visual learner I greatly appreciate) that helps make the “learning experience effective and enjoyable” including advice on how to make your environment conducive to learning; how to take notes; how to listen and reflect, and several other key preparatory aspects to learning.

We must not assume that the CF workforce are learning ready. People may not have undertaken learning (of any nature, not just online) for a while. Neither is the CF workforce a traditional office-based workforce. A large proportion of it works remotely, peripatetically, in community venues without ready access to a PC, or only has hand-held devices available to work on. It is feasible that CF workers will be learning in short sharp bursts and our Learning Zone needs to be responsive to this.

So, so far so good.

I have been made to feel welcomed and valued as a learner. I have already begun to think of some changes to make to our learning Zone and have completed my first blog. Now I just need to catch up as I’ve already fallen behind because work gets in the way!

I recently had the pleasure of attending the ‘What Next for Community Journalism?’ event held by Cardiff University’s Centre for Community Journalism (Storify of the event here). Since it is a topic with which I am not much familiar I attended with a degree of trepidation and, indeed, found myself surrounded by a number of journalists, both of the ‘traditional’ and community variety (the distinction between which came to be much more blurred by the end of the day), and lots of talk of business models, meta data and coding.

The day was fascinating, in fact I was a little punch-drunk by the end of it. There’s a live and fluid regulatory landscape that hyperlocals need to aware of; against a backdrop of profits of as little as £100 a month (and seldom above £500), the financing and staffing of hyperlocal news is fraught; there is research into different business models in Europe and elsewhere in the UK; there was a plea for input to an effort to merely count how many hyperlocals exist in the UK; and there were two terrific examples, from Bristol and Greenwich, of investigative hyperlocal journalism. The former in particular pricked my interest as it is a member co-operative and one case study it highlighted was of an investigation into working conditions in Bristol’s catering sector, a sector in which many of the co-operative’s members had had poor experiences.

The thought occurred to me that sound community development principles underpinned this particular venture: collectivising to challenge power imbalances and effect positive change. That the Bristol Cable does so with a satirical and entertaining style only served to enhance its appeal.

If I have a criticism of the conference it was the extent to which it creates the impression that hyperlocal news only exists in English.

Easy to assume based on the #cj15 content so far that hyperlocal and community journalism only happens in English

There was only the very briefest, blink-and-you-missed-it of references to Pobl Caerdydd and given that the Papurau Bro culture in Wales is so long-established – and judging by this directory in relatively rude health – this is a shame.

There's a long history of hyperlocal Welsh-language content going back to the 19th century. Moving to digital with @Clonc360@ogwen360#CJ15

Equally, the American examples of hyperlocals cited in Gilmoor’s address were all English-medium with no suggestion that there are any hyperlocals in Spanish, minority or immigrant languages. There was a lot of reference to hyperlocal journalism’s proximity, tuned-inness and responsiveness to ‘community’ and ‘communities’.

Hyperlocal reflecting role of local people and grassroots groups more than mainstream local media – @cardiffuni Dr Andy Williams #CJ15

But communities aren’t homogenous, and though I have no doubt that hyperlocals operate largely in English, if, as was stated, the principles of hyperlocal journalism are identical to traditional journalism – thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and independence – but with added transparency, it is only ‘fair’ and ‘accurate’ that the non-English speaking elements within communities, particularly urban ones (which were overwhelmingly those in attendance and/or profiled), are given room on the hyperlocal platform.

If this linguistic issue was one that occurred to me during the conference, another that I brought with me to the event but which was not explored – and is related to the notion of heterogeneous communities – is the extent to which hyperlocal news replicates ‘traditional’ media in its exploitative and pejorative coverage of disadvantaged communities; and the extent to which hyperlocal news offers such communities the opportunity to reclaim their ‘news agenda’ and express and describe the issues that affect them. I wasn’t alone

On my way from Manchester to #CJ15. Particularly interested in how hyperlocals can plug the information gap in deprived areas.

The term ‘poverty porn’ has entered popular lexicon to refer to television programmes such as Benefits Street and Britain’s Hardest Grafter (a proposed BBC programme which aims to pit low-paid workers against each other to “show their worth”; answers on a postcard if you can spot the public service aspect here…) which exploit and degrade people living in poverty. The programmes dehumanise poor people and serve their struggles with poverty up for and as entertainment; it is a sad but very real dystopia. In Wales, Sky broadcasted A Town Like Merthyr which portrayed it as a benefit-dependent, work-shy town. It was a further dark day for journalism when headlines such as those below suggested men in Merthyr Tydfil/Merthyr Tudful had a lower life expectancy than Haiti or Iraq:

Health professionals, authors of the report and politicians all rubbished the headlines and pointed out that the media had not only misrepresented the statistics, but had misunderstood them (assuming that they had read them at all).

As the Director of Public Health at the Cwm Taf Health Board told Fullfacts.org:

the figure that has been picked up in the press actually refers to the male healthy life expectancy (i.e. the average period for which a man can expect to retain their good health). This is obviously much lower than the total life expectancy.

(emphasis added)

The full Fullfacts.org exposé is well worth a read. I am sure there would be few, if any, delegates at the community journalism conference who would suggest Sky, the Daily Mail or Mirror are bastions of tasteful and ethical journalism, but I cite these only in order to highlight how disadvantaged communities are often written about but are seldom their own authors.

If hyperlocals replicate ‘mainstream’ media in exploiting and misrepresenting disadvantaged communities and writing pejoratively about them, then the fact they are more local is no justification. Should hyperlocals not consider issues affecting disadvantaged communities such as lower levels of literacy, digital and financial exclusion, and poor broadband or mobile infrastructure they will only serve to further entrench information deficits and further exclude people from civil, democratic and community life. If affluent communities with hyperlocals only read hyperlocal news from affluent communities, it will serve to obscure and conceal poverty in neighbouring communities.

It was clear in the conference how much volunteer energy, effort, passion and expense is expended on people’s hyperlocal enterprises and it is a big ask of volunteers to consider outreach and engagement work in disadvantaged communities and with under-represented groups in order to encourage readership and contributions by them. The community development sector should consider it the prime advocate for, brokers with and facilitators of disadvantaged communities’ involvement with hyperlocals; which in turn will benefit from a greater plurality of news and voices. Communities First should identify local community news outlets and develop relationships and practical arrangements with them. It is not a simple gap to plug should they not exist coterminously or contiguously with Communities First and/or disadvantaged communities; and arguably community development workers should not be setting up hyperlocals for disadvantaged communities. All credit to Cardiff University then for establishing community journalism projects in and crucially with areas of disadvantage in Wales (such as in Grangetown and north Merthyr).

The Bristol Cable’s investigation on behalf of low-paid catering workers was a terrific example of how under-represented or seldom-heard groups can be given a voice by community journalism. But that the conference failed to address the issue of engagement with and by disadvantaged communities in any greater detail was a slight disappointment for me; but this is not to detract from an excellent event overall.

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independenttropicalwales · Thought and opinion inspired and informed by living and working in community development in Wales / Meddwl a barn ysbrydoledig a hysbysir trwy fyw a gweithio mewn datblygu cymunedol yng Nghymru